The man from the train The solving of a century-old serial killer mystery

Pioneering baseball analyst Bill James (he created the Sabermetrics statistical analysis system) successfully transfers his detail-oriented mind-set to true crime in this suspenseful historical account, cowritten with his daughter, Rachel McCarthy James. The authors' focus is a series of murders, perhaps as many as 100, committed by a killer they call "the man from the train," who slaughtered entire households, mostly in the Midwest, during the first two decades of the 20th century. Beginning with the best known of the crimes-the massacre of the Moore family in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912-the Jameses identify the signature elements of the crimes: the murderer struck near train tracks, used the blunt side of an axe, left valuables behind, covered his victims' heads with cloth, and displayed a sexual interest in prepubescent females. The authors, who culled data from hundreds of thousands of small-town newspapers of the era to identify crimes not initially thought connected, build their case with an innovative mix of statistical analysis and primary sources. They conclude with a plausible identification of the culprit, but the strength of the book hangs on their diligent research and analysis connecting crimes into the closing years of the 19th century. Even those skeptical at the outset that one man was responsible for so much bloodshed are likely to be convinced. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In early 20th-century America, an unknown man traversed the country, mainly the South and Midwest, riding the rails. He would hop off the train, usually near a small town, locate a secluded house near the tracks, and brutally murder the occupants with the blunt side of an axe. Before any alarms could be raised, he would disappear onto another train to strike elsewhere. Popular sportswriter Bill James (Popular Crime) and his daughter, writer Rachel McCarthy James, painstakingly scoured thousands of newspapers and records to piece together the bloody trail of the titular Man from the Train. Using the infamous 1912 murder of the Moore family in Villisca, IA, as a starting point, the authors worked backward locating one, then another, crime that seemed to fit together. Eventually, they settled upon a suspect. Although the circumstantial evidence for their suspect is less than desirable, they may have indeed solved this century-old case. VERDICT Fans of historical true crime will enjoy the conversational and fast-paced writing about these unsolved murders and an early 20th-century serial murderer.-Chad E. Statler, Lakeland Comm. Coll., Kirtland, OH © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A baseball detective attempts to solve a homicide cold case.With his statistics-driven "abstracts," James (The Bill James Handbook: Baseball Info Solutions, 2017, etc.) is famous for revolutionizing the way fans look at baseball. Here, the author and his daughter deliver a provocative book that employs his prodigious research techniques in an effort to solve a famous, 100-year-old mass murder case. Murders, actually, as their research on this case led them to a startling conclusion. On June 9, 1912, in Villisca, Iowa, a family of eight was brutally murdered with an ax at night in their home. No one was ever convicted. James believed other, similar mass murders might have occurred around the same time: "And then I found one, and another one, and another one. I hired my daughter as a researcher, and then she started finding them." The authors' research uncovered at least a dozen similar murders from 1909 to 1912 that occurred from Virginia to Oregon to Kansas, 48 murders in all. They kept digging and found a few dozen more during the period 1900 to 1906, with the locations ranging from Nova Scotia to Arkansas to Florida. The authors became convinced they were committed by one person. The murderer's modus operandi revealed a pattern: he worked for a living, probably in mining or logging, committed the crimes on weekends with an ax, often burning down the house, and didn't steal anything. Since the murders were always close to train lines, the authors figured he traveled by train. Eventually, they came up with a suspect. They include detailed discussions of investigative techniques back then and stories about people wrongly (they feel) executed for the crimes. Told in workmanlike, journalistic prose with plenty of personal injections"hear me out. Have I got a story to tell you"the narrative becomes addictive, and it's easy to get caught up in the elaborate search and the authors' conclusions, which are plausible. Fans of true crimeas well as detectives in homicide bureauswill relish this book. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Man from the Train Preface I have long been fascinated by the notion that knowledge can be created about the past. Dinosaurs are the easiest example. For tens of thousands of years, humans had no awareness that the world had once been inhabited by gigantic beasts. Now, we know not merely that these animals existed, but we have identified hundreds of species of them. We know what they looked like, generally, and what they ate. We know which type of dinosaur lived where, and in what era. We know what happened to them. We have not merely created this knowledge, we have disseminated it so widely across our culture that the average five-year-old now can name a dozen types of dinosaurs, and has a collection of little plastic models of them. In my day job I am a baseball writer. We know many, many things now about the baseball players of the 1950s and 1960s, about Willie Mays and Bob Gibson and Stan Musial, that those men themselves did not know and could not possibly have known when they were playing. We have pieced together records of their careers that are far more complete than the records which were kept at the time. Modern historians know things about the Romans that the Romans themselves did not know and could not have known. A hundred years ago and a little more, there were a series of terrible crimes that took place in the American Midwest (although it actually started in the Northeast and the South, the midwestern portion of the series is the well-known part). The most famous of these crimes are the murders in Villisca, Iowa, but it is apparent to anyone who will take the time to look that the Villisca murders were a part of a series of similar events. I was reading about that series of crimes and I had a thought. "I'll bet there were others," I thought, "that the contemporary authorities never linked to the same criminal." With modern computers, we can search tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of small-town newspapers, looking for reports of similar events. And I found one. And then I found another one, and another one, and another one. I hired my daughter as a researcher, and she started finding them. We had no idea what we were dealing with. And we never dreamed that we would actually be able to figure out who he was. By the time he came to Villisca, The Man from the Train had been murdering randomly selected families for a decade and a half. People had been executed for his crimes; people had been lynched for his crimes; and people were rotting away in prison for his crimes. Skeptical? Of course you're skeptical. You're either skeptical or you're stupid, and you don't look stupid. But hear me out. Have I got a story to tell you. --Bill James Excerpted from The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James, Rachel McCarthy James All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.